Israeli control of the Rafah crossing: why is this border crossing so important?

It was a gateway for humanitarian aid and even an outlet for civilians fleeing war. The Israeli army announced on Tuesday that it had taken control of the Palestinian part of the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

On Sunday, rockets fired by Hamas’s armed wing from the site killed four Israeli soldiers and wounded about ten others. On Monday, the IDF asked residents of the city, where more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge, to “temporarily evacuate” certain areas.

Previously, this border crossing was controlled by Hamas. But the Israelis suspect the Islamist movement of spreading weapons through the Rafah tunnels. “We had evidence, including the firing” of rockets on Sunday, “as well as intelligence that part of the Rafah crossing in the Gaza Strip (…) was used by Hamas for terrorist purposes,” the army explained.

“It’s a strategic location,” explains Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam, director of the international and political relations program at the University of Tours. In 2005, when the Israeli army left Rafah after weeks of closing the crossing, it said it needed to be kept under control. According to her, one of the IDF’s tasks now is “to disarm Hamas and make sure that members of the organization remain in the enclave so that they can be found.”

The issue of humanitarian aid in the spotlight

“This is the usual version, determined by political power. They did not destroy Hamas because they found three tunnels,” says Guillaume Ancel, a former officer and author of Saint-Cyr, à l’école de la Grande Muette (ed. Flammarion). In his opinion, taking control of this passage will first of all allow the Israeli army to “lock down the territory.”

Rafah is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid into Gaza. The army dropped leaflets calling on residents to evacuate “to the expanded al-Mawasi humanitarian zone,” about ten kilometers from Rafah. Residents and humanitarian organizations describe areas that are already overpopulated or destroyed by war. According to Guillaume Ansel, this seizure gives the IDF the opportunity to close the border post in both directions to avoid “possible exit into Egypt” while prohibiting “any entry of humanitarian aid.”

On Tuesday, Israel denied the UN access to the crossing point, according to a spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, for its part called for humanitarian aid to be allowed through the Rafah crossing.